Jana Esther Fries
Archaeology has been my passion for more than 30 years. My team and I take care of the archaeological heritage in the west of Lower Saxony. This includes rescue excavations, surveys, consultation for public and private developers, municipalities, and institutions, developing regulations for excavation companies, public relations, supporting archaeological research, and publications .
As a researcher I have focused on Iron Age archaeology, in particular Hallstatt culture, gender history, and settlement archaeology. In recent years, due to the finds and sites in our region, Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures, house construction, and Bronze Age graves have been of great interesst to me, besides the relation of heritage/research institutions and the general public.
Phone: 0(049)441/7992120
Address: Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage
Ofener Strasse 15
D-26121 Oldenburg
As a researcher I have focused on Iron Age archaeology, in particular Hallstatt culture, gender history, and settlement archaeology. In recent years, due to the finds and sites in our region, Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures, house construction, and Bronze Age graves have been of great interesst to me, besides the relation of heritage/research institutions and the general public.
Phone: 0(049)441/7992120
Address: Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage
Ofener Strasse 15
D-26121 Oldenburg
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Books by Jana Esther Fries
The papers united in this volume highlight the relationship between words and images, thinking and showing, knowledge and assumptions, scholarly thinking and popular images in archaeology They cover two main issues: pictorial representations of archaeology in academic and popular media, and pictures in museums. The authors examine the use of gender in academic publications, TV-documentaries, video games, non-fiction books for children and adolescents, and in archaeological museums in Spain and Germany.
The volume is the result of two sessions of gender study in archaeology: “Images of the Past: Gender and its Representations” during the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in September 2014 in Istanbul, and “Gender in Museums”, the symposium of the Nordwestdeutscher Verband für Altertumskunde (Northwest German Association for Antiquarian Studies) in September 2013 in Lübeck. So this book includes articles in English and in German.
Papers by Jana Esther Fries
In my paper I discuss the fundamental theoretical concepts of prehistoric gender archaeology, a few results and some of the many open questions.
Once studying became possible, some female colleagues reached infl uential positions early on while having to overcome serious obstacles. To this day the proportion of women archaeologists in important positions clearly lags behind the proportion of women students. For around 30 years women’s networks in the subject have been working on many levels for more equal opportunities and diverse content.
body are discussed. Th e gender ratio within archaeological institutions and therefore the working conditions within archaeology are also considered.
Feminist criticism as well as new questions, models, and methods based on it reached archaeology in the 1980s, later than the other humanities. Initial efforts could be classified as women’s studies that mostly aimed to balance a male-biased view of the past by adding a female view to it. Since the 1990s, the term ‘gender’ with its various aspects is the focus of discussion. The number, convertibility, and history of genders are also important topics.
In addition, feminist archaeology focuses on archaeology’s own institutions, their social rules, their language, and their image, which are also linked to the gender expectations of the surrounding society. These aspects are also connected to the way images of the past are presented to the public, and which effects they have on gender discourses.
The papers united in this volume highlight the relationship between words and images, thinking and showing, knowledge and assumptions, scholarly thinking and popular images in archaeology They cover two main issues: pictorial representations of archaeology in academic and popular media, and pictures in museums. The authors examine the use of gender in academic publications, TV-documentaries, video games, non-fiction books for children and adolescents, and in archaeological museums in Spain and Germany.
The volume is the result of two sessions of gender study in archaeology: “Images of the Past: Gender and its Representations” during the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in September 2014 in Istanbul, and “Gender in Museums”, the symposium of the Nordwestdeutscher Verband für Altertumskunde (Northwest German Association for Antiquarian Studies) in September 2013 in Lübeck. So this book includes articles in English and in German.
In my paper I discuss the fundamental theoretical concepts of prehistoric gender archaeology, a few results and some of the many open questions.
Once studying became possible, some female colleagues reached infl uential positions early on while having to overcome serious obstacles. To this day the proportion of women archaeologists in important positions clearly lags behind the proportion of women students. For around 30 years women’s networks in the subject have been working on many levels for more equal opportunities and diverse content.
body are discussed. Th e gender ratio within archaeological institutions and therefore the working conditions within archaeology are also considered.
Feminist criticism as well as new questions, models, and methods based on it reached archaeology in the 1980s, later than the other humanities. Initial efforts could be classified as women’s studies that mostly aimed to balance a male-biased view of the past by adding a female view to it. Since the 1990s, the term ‘gender’ with its various aspects is the focus of discussion. The number, convertibility, and history of genders are also important topics.
In addition, feminist archaeology focuses on archaeology’s own institutions, their social rules, their language, and their image, which are also linked to the gender expectations of the surrounding society. These aspects are also connected to the way images of the past are presented to the public, and which effects they have on gender discourses.
cemeteries, including sizeable ones, but hardly any settlements in wide areas. In contrast, settlements have long been
known from the fertile marshes along the North Sea coast, with occupation in some cases even beginning in the
Bronze Age. Similarly, Iron Age settlements have been found in the neighbouring provinces in the Netherlands.
There, the evolution of different types of houses and larger settlements could be reconstructed. A review of archival
material and the literature demonstrates, that the picture of missing Iron Age settlement in western Lower Saxony
is only partially correct. Also, in the past decade, new finds of settlements and houses of pre-roman Iron Age date
during large scale excavations, help to correct this picture.
Raimund Karl, Jutta Leskovar (Hrsg.), Interpretierte Eisenzeiten. Fallstudien, Methoden, Theorie. Tagungsbeiträge der 5. Linzer
Gespräche zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchäologie. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte von Oberösterreich, Folge 37. Linz 2013. xx-xx
In some cases, we witness short-lived individual houses or dwelling houses with several ancilliary buildings, in others
larger settlement with longer terms of occupation. Different house types can be shown, which are similar to those
known form the Dutch house typology, but not identical. Three-ailsed houses combining living quarters with stables
seem to have been adopted on the Geest only at the beginning of the imperial period, while they had been in use
much earlier along the coast. Due to larger numbers of houses or the absence of normal dwelling houses, some settlements
may have had a different function than others, or may represent different types of economic use.
Feminist Perspectives on Social Archaeology
AGE Session In Memoriam Liv Helga Dommasnes
the county of Bentheim, Lower Saxony, prior to the development of a residential area. The investigations revealed numerous hearth pits under a thick layer of ash dating to the Mesolithic period, as well as a Late Bronze and Early Iron Age burial ground.
The latter extended around a multi-phased Late Neolithic and Middle Bronze Age burial mound, and could be subdivided into several different occupancy groups. Other findings date to the Early Modern agricultural activity in this area. This paper describes the history of the land use history of the area, and in particular, discusses the Mesolithic hearth pit features, these having been documented at other sites in Lower Saxony in recent years.
Small tanged points and a long blade fragment probably assign the assemblage to the late Ahrensburgian (c. 10.000–9.600 calBC). Special attention deserves a blade fragment made of Red Heligoland flint. The find provides the opportunity to discuss the role of this flint source during the Late Glacial in the lowlands. There is evidence that this exotic flint type was of more relevance during the Allerød Interstadial and especially during the transitional phase from the Younger Dryas to the Preboreal.
In the very Southwest of Lower Saxony, this picture has been augmented by finds of two voluntary collectors from two sites of wet sand mining. Faunal remains of 51 mostly glacial species and 64 artefacts were recovered over a period of c. 18 years. The silexes tend to date to the late Middle Palaeolithic. Among them there are – apart from flakes for preparation and target flakes of the Levallois technique – various implements with simply worked edges, a leaf-shapedscraper and a small Keilmesser.
The geological conditions at the sites, the composition of the artefacts and the faunal remains as well as the four radiocarbondatings suggest that the sites from Gildehaus are contemporary with the known Middle Palaeolithic sites Salzgitter-Lebenstedt and Lichtenberg in the East of Lower Saxony.
Carvings on a newly detected boilder within a megaltihic tomb rise several questions.
The hitherto known artefacts made of this type of stone can be attributed to Federmesser or Stielspitzen (tanged point) groups between ca. 14,000 and 12,000 B.C. The Damme flint core shows a typical method of working used by the hunter groups of the upper palaeolithic. The Magdalénien and Hamburgian Cultures come into consideration here. Therefore the core might be the earliest evidence of visits to the still dry island. There is no evidence of a possible symbolic significance of this striking raw material. The spectrum of late palaeolithic red Heligoland flint artefacts does not differ from the inventories of common moraine flint. However the distribution of the red flint indicates particular reasons behind its use. The great distances point more probably to exchange from hand to hand rather than self-supply which would require vast territories.
The systematic survey of the site on 22./23.2.2012 indicates that the observed distribution of finds are part of Reinerth’s larger site, a part of which Bolke had recorded in the fringe area of the great sand drift mound. The extensive area over which the finds are spread leads to the assumption of many single camp sites. The transport of only one habitation site over the long distances by labour can be ruled out. The extensive examination of the survey data allows the making of a finer resolution image of the settlement traces, allowing forecasts for future surveys. It reveals a wide spatial differentiation, consisting of areas with concentrations of artefacts and areas without finds, of variously dispersed tools and processing waste.
The spatial representation of the main tendencies is confirmed by critical examination of the sources. The distribution images can be enlarged to ca. 5x5 m objects. The five palaeolithic and one mesolithic concentrations are to be confirmed by further prospections. The potential areas with upper to late palaeolithic finds indicate where the red flint cores could have been gathered by Bolke. Here the residue from its working could be searched for in order to verify if and how it was worked in situ. A separate recycled core in its ultimate stage, which had been carried a long way, would show a particular estimation of its value. The solution to these questions can further our understanding of the long distance contacts of the hunter and gatherers in the late ice age, and of the significance of the raw material for their social connections.
In this talk explore how fieldwork and excavations have been defined historically as the core of our profession and why women were excluded from fieldwork longer than from other aspects of the archaeological profession. Fieldwork as a gendered set of technical and methodological skills reinforced certain visual representations of women’s participation in archaeology. This has had a negative effect on women’s employment in archaeology.
These gendered notions of skills, techniques, and methods employed by field archaeologists has also influenced the kinds of topics and research conducted by women archaeologists in the past and present.
Finally, I analyse how (young) archaeologists present their work in such a way to reinforce gendered stereotypes through visual representations (photographs) and in social media.
In my paper I discussed the fundamental theoretical concepts of prehistoric gender archaeology, a few results and some of the many open questions.
The paper investigates the effects of rescue excavation results on our idea of Iron Age settlements in a low land region. It highlights the similarities to the settlement landscape of the neighboring Netherlands as well as the links to Westphalia and other coastal regions. Finally, the question of research strategies in the analyses of the many developer led excavations is discussed.
Bog bodies, skeletal remains and cremated bones have been determined as physically male or female by physicians, archaeologists and physical anthropologists. Statuettes haven been named “Venus” (often) or “Adonis” (rarely) by archaeologists and historians and even rather abstract depictions of prehistoric humans have been interpreted as biological men and women. These attributions have an immediate effect on the further description and interpretation of the archaeological record.
I will discuss how and why archaeologists among others tend to see a (biological) man or are woman in every representation of a human being and even in their physical remains. Besides that the paper examines the long history of naming pre(historic) individuals or depictions after antique goddesses or heroes. It deals with the physical and psychological characteristics that are attributed by this naming and it´s effect on our image of prehistoric humans.